Flak Magazine: 2004 Oscar Dialogue on Lost in Translation, 01.29.04

Yes, The Godfather III was execrable, but not just for her performance. Yes, the Lynn Hirschberg profile in the New York Times (ah, Sofia Coppola and her universe of privilege, ennui and over-achieving peers!) left me cold. Yes, she's pretty and well-dressed and rich and something of a dilettante. But I don't hate her. She's a capable enough filmmaker; I quite liked The Virgin Suicides (though I will predictably allow that I prefer the novel) and her work on this film, too, is assured and confident. She can make a movie, there's no question.

The movie she's made, though, is not as wonderful as everyone says. The root of the problem is that American movies are, on the whole, so rotten that any movie not rotten in the most obvious ways (lots of Arab terrorists, explosions, Steven Seagal) is touted as genius. I wouldn't go so far as to say Lost in Translation is bad — not in the way that, say, She's All That is a bad movie. Maybe it's my contrary nature, but the fact that Lost in Translation is held up as the apex of contemporary American filmmaking compels me to point out its flaws.

Coppola is, again, an assured filmmaker who worked with a talented cinematographer and made a movie that's beautiful and composed, with the emotional heft of a Volkswagen commercial. VW makes great commercials, but there's a big difference between a great commercial and a great movie, right?

Most of the problems with this movie have to do with Coppola's script, which is really just horrible. Two questions: If Scarlett Johansson's Charlotte has just graduated from Yale, why does she talk about her life in California and not New Haven? Also, what kind of Yalie philosophy major would listen to self-help visualization tapes, even ironically? OK, perhaps these are minor points. The real flaw in the writing reveals at the movie's conclusion, but we can get to that later.

Do you remember that episode of "The Simpsons" in which the family travels to Japan and, having lost their last yen, appear on a Japanese game show to win passage back to the States? The show is called "Happy Smile Super Challenge Family Wish Show" and it's a funny send-up of Japanese popular culture. It's affectionate but unflinching. I suspect Coppola intended to communicate the same thing in her depictions of Japan — the talk show, the nightlife, the belligerent prostitute. But a pall of xenophobia lingered over all of those things.

One of the most maddening defenses of Coppola's vision of Japan is "I've been there; it's really like that." And America is really the way Oliver Stone portrayed it in Natural Born Killers, isn't it? It's hyperbole done sincerely; it's "A Modest Proposal" with a straight face. Sure, Sofia Coppola didn't intend us to find Japan so alien — she's just trying to make her characters seem further disconnected from the world than they might have back in California. But the gambit fails. Is it because their geographic dislocation itself is too accessible to the audience, when this was meant to be less the point than their inner dislocation from the substance of their lives? Maybe. But it's troubling the way Coppola treats Japan: as a prop. It's not unlike how Von Trier treats Emily Watson in Breaking the Waves.

But it's not cultural insensitivity; it's the uncertain hand of the writer which mucks up several things in the movie. Why introduce a sexual element into the relationship between Bob and Charlotte when it's implicit? Why send them out to karaoke? And why, why, why that ending?

Tony Nigro | Matthew's Best Hit TV

Uh-oh, the bad ending argument. I should have seen it coming.

For all you've said, I still don't understand what you dislike about the ending. Because it doesn't have Syd Field closure? Because it's elusive, or even nonexistent? Those are common complaints, but they're also the same expectations that have led most American films to be so rotten.

Lost in Translation's ending — and its entire script, for that matter — is part of the driving force behind its brilliance. See, it has a few things that are missing from current Hollywood movies, especially those made by Sofia Coppola's ironic hipster circle (movies that include Adaptation, CQ, Rushmore): honesty and compassion. There really is unabashed emotion going on in this film. It's not the drunken catharsis of John Cassavetes, but it does bear similarity to his cinema-as-life dogma: Life has few definite answers, people are not characters, Hollywood is a big fat liar, etc.

What we're glimpsing in this film is a matter of days in the lives of two people — not characters from a Bruckheimer pitch session — and that's it. The life back home isn't consequential — yet. The best we can tell, Charlotte is self-absorbed and Bob is a pathetic father. They bond. They sing karaoke for no good reason but to pass time. We can't hear what he says to her. So what? It's messy, but so is life. Bob and Charlotte's respective lives aren't over when the credits roll, so the script is elliptical, but it's not contrived to guarantee a Lost in Translation 2: This Time It's Personal. Like Cassavetes' films, the emotional truths are boiled down to natural moments, not dramatically structured events: exchanged looks, hands touching on the bed, that remarkable ending that doesn't give in to convention but still conveys feeling through Scarlett Johansson's smile. And this is to say little else of what Murray and Johansson's measured performances contribute to the pie. I hate the phrase "slice of life," but Lost in Translation does it some justice.

And I just can't cotton to the Japanese cliché/stereotype debate. We know Coppola didn't have a flag-waving, Rumsfeld-loving upbringing, so let's assume that she's not patently insensitive. I won't draw such problematic guns as "Stereotypes are based in fact" or "It's funny because it's true" (except for the talk show scene — Matthew Minami is for real). But I will remind you that many Japanese filmmakers use Japan just like Martin Scorsese and Woody Allen use New York City. See Akira Kurosawa's use of urban landscape in High and Low, the "going to the city" section of Yasujiro Ozu's Tokyo Story or any samurai epic's treatment of history. Yes, some of the cultural comedy is unsettling, but I wouldn't call it xenophobic. The unsettling nature is another part of the film's honesty. Keep in mind that Tokyo itself is the story's antagonist. Bob and Charlotte are two people who want nothing more than the comforts of home when they can't have them, so we see Tokyo through their jaded eyes. It may not be open-minded for the characters, but it sure is human for the filmmaker.

None of this really justifies excessive short jokes, but does it discredit Coppola's viewpoint as an outsider, or as an artist?

Rumaan Alam | Pussy Galore

Everything I know about Cassavetes I learned from the Fugazi song of the same name, so I can't get into that discussion.

There's something to be said for a naturalist approach to filmmaking, but LiT doesn't adhere to what I would term "naturalism, "nor is reticence the script's particular strength. That's the movie's major flaw. It's reticent because it lacks the authority to be declarative.

You brought up what is, to my mind, the pivotal moment: Bob whispers something to Charlotte, she smiles, we don't hear what it is, the movie concludes.

This was maddening. It was the opportunity for Coppola to at last explain herself and she didn't, because she couldn't. Just as she was unable to present the relationship between these two characters as what it was — she introduced a sexual element with a heavy hand for no reason, spoiling the eroticism inherent in the male/female, man/girl vibe that already existed between the characters — she was unable to allow the audience to draw the conclusion that these characters' time together in Tokyo was meaningful. She had to show us. She didn't trust that we would get it. Bob said something to this lost young woman. I get it, I get it. Let's call it the Pussy Galore syndrome: The sexy lady's name is Pussy Galore. We get it, we get it.

An ending doesn't need to have closure. It should, however, feel earned. These two characters romp around and don't actually talk all that much. Suddenly, they are sharing with one another how profound they've both found this experience? It would have been more consistent of them to have said nothing to one another. The way it is in the movie is a bit like deathbed repentance, and you're allowing the criminal into heaven. Redemption is not so easily earned.

Plus, this is probably just because I am a writer, but I will say this: It's hard to write something meaningful. It's easy to set the scene and to imagine the players, but to get them to communicate something of import to one another and to the audience (not just the author) is difficult, very difficult. It's easy to create the trappings of meaning; take almost any Hollywood weeper. Hell, take those commercials for that prescription drug for people undergoing chemotherapy. To actually say something is something else entirely. This movie masquerades as profound, but it just has the trappings of profundity.

Without getting back into the whole Japan thing: No way does Coppola use Tokyo the way Woody Allen uses New York. Allen knows and loves New York, uses her as a leading lady he's worked with time and time again. Coppola's approach is like Robert Altman's with one of the weirdo celebrity cameos packed into his movies; it's like Tokyo is Sophia Loren in Prêt-à-Porter, and Coppola's telling her, "OK, now do something crazy, and I'll film it!"

By the way, since you mentioned karaoke, I admit a deep-seated bias against it (a more aggressive form of fun I can't imagine. Ugh.), but it is a perfect moment in the script. Coppola can't get her characters to properly say anything, as she has no command of words herself. So she uses the words of more eloquent people: the Pretenders, Elvis Costello. She's a plagiarist.

I suspect there are a lot of things we're not discussing, so feel free to change the subject. I did love all the stuff about the hotel band Sausalito, especially its name. That stuff is pitch-perfect. Maybe this should have just been a comedy?

Tony Nigro | Seen, Not Heard

Some of the alternatives you propose might send Lost in Translation further into the realm of crap than you already think it is. First, if this were a straightforward comedy, it would be considered a romantic comedy, and those are typically the most hackneyed junk out there. As for explaining oneself: Is a filmmaker's trust in the audience really linked to explaining herself? The act of not directly explaining seems more a sign of implicit trust. If everything were explicit, the audience wouldn't be allowed room to think, and then it'd be watching an Oliver Stone film.

Cinema is primarily visual, so saying something well goes way beyond situation and dialogue. Maybe Coppola does explain herself, only not in a way you'd expect, meaning what Bob says isn't as important as how Charlotte reacts to it. That smile is more memorable and honest than a sophistic monologue any day. In fact, the lack of "meaningful" dialogue throughout the movie plays to a theme of communication breakdowns. It happens between Bob and his director, or Bob and his call girl, and it also happens between those speaking the same language — Bob and Charlotte; Charlotte and Spike Jonze (I mean, John); John and Cameron Diaz (I mean, Kelly). So you get less dialogue and more visuals — a reflection of Bob and Charlotte in a window becomes the two of them alone, floating above the city — and song lyrics. It's not necessarily a perfectly realized theme, but it's definitely conscious; after all, it's in the title. That's why the meaning of whatever Bob says at the end is best understood by Charlotte's smile. Whatever he said, it was finally something satisfying that she could take to the bank. For us, suddenly the thematic tables are turned and it was lost in translation. No matter, we can still get something out of that smile, because communication doesn't always require words. With the tone of the film being what it is, the ending is earned.

When you say "sexual element," do you mean Bob's one-nighter with the singer? I just wanted to clarify because I didn't really get that anywhere else. There's tension between Bob and Charlotte, for sure, but it's that obscure, quasi-sexual/paternal kind of tension, and it's part of what makes their relationship so unique, for a movie relationship anyway.

Speaking of sex, the opening shot of Johansson's rear in sheer underwear in so perfect. Not just because I find Johansson attractive, but also because it's so blatant that I feel guilty for finding her (and her ass) attractive before the movie even begins. Like Brigitte Bardot's deliberate nude scene in Jean-Luc Godard's Contempt, it's a jab at obligatory commercial sleaze, while at the same time throwing us off a bit, much in the way a middle-aged father like Bob would hopefully be thrown off. Because this is not a sexy story. Charlotte comes off as provocative mostly when she's by herself, lounging in underwear, and thankfully the rest of the time Coppola steers her around possible degrading Lolita moments. And she does so with a degree of grace.

How do you feel about the acting? That's one of the bigger things that all the Oscar-watch critics keep humping.

Oh, and everybody hates karaoke until they find their song. Keep trying.

Rumaan Alam | Tickle Fight!

She's pretty, that Scarlett. I saw her on the Golden Globes last night. She's very pretty.

There's an episode of "Seinfeld" in which Elaine becomes friends with Susan, George's doomed fiancée. After a day with Susan, Elaine is talking to Jerry about what they did, and he interrupts her and suggests that after their day out, the two women went back home, stripped down to bra and panties, and had a tickle fight. Elaine counters with something like, "That's really what you think, isn't it?"

It's interesting that this movie, directed and written by a woman, shows the female protagonist lounging about in her underpants. That's something I'd expect from a different director, and not something I'm willing to chalk up to the lofty sources you cite. If you follow your reasoning in your last e-mail, substituting real people for the players (though, as a fiction writer, I do not condone this particular school of criticism) then Charlotte stands for Sofia, and Sofia sees herself as a sexy, delicate little bird, flitting about her room in her underpants.

Come on.

The opening shot of the movie is perfect because Johansson has a hot body. Bob lusts for it, you lust for it, everyone lusts for it, and her performance doesn't have me convinced that she's more than just a hot body. Just because her husband (another plot point: Who gets married that young anymore? It's not 1952.) is a boor doesn't mean that she is a delicate flower. The same logic applied to the couple portrayed on-screen by Julianne Moore and John C. Reilly, in the absurd movie of the irritating book "The Hours." There must be more compelling ways to communicate depth in a female character than by making the men around her unlikable.

And I, unlike you, felt that the tension between Bob and Charlotte was sustained nicely through most of the movie and then blown when they kissed on the lips. It was chaste enough, but it was too loud, too deliberate. It wasn't an authentic representation of what was transpiring between them. Maybe they were just submitting to convention or something, but there was something all too Woody Allen about it.

Re: the acting. Well, Bill Murray was great, but then he's always great. He was great in Ghostbusters. Hell, the cartoon version of him on the animated "Ghostbusters" was great, and that was someone else entirely. But Johannson's performance, I don't know. Is it a bad script and she's doing the best she can? Or is it a good script and she's a wretched actress? It's probably a mediocre script in which the female protagonist is meant to be silent and demure and sexy and damaged, and from this we can infer intelligence, will and, beneath that, passion. She seemed kind of like a jerk. When she made that Evelyn Waugh comment I cringed a bit; wouldn't it have been better if she'd done so less harshly? Basically, I can't tell if I dislike Charlotte or Scarlett, so maybe that is a testament to how well-acted this movie is after all!

Well, she certainly is pretty. And she wears some very nice clothes.

Tony Nigro | What Would Nora Ephron Do?

I'll concede that the hardest things to stomach are the film's few "thinly veiled me" moments. (I'll also concede that Murray is a genius and Johannson is a babe of unproven genius.) It does bring up the question, however, of who Charlotte might better represent, Johannson or Coppola, who for all I know could be a self-centered woman who thinks she's hot when she's not praising monastic purity like an old-fashioned Orientalist. But it's all beyond my caring at this point. What transcends character flaws is that their feelings here are so damn real, that the truth in their respective performances killed my inner skeptic, and that somewhere I found the sympathy to enjoy the film not for what the characters represent but for what they feel as human beings.

This movie is continually described as a capital-C comedy, as if it really deserves to stand between Adam Sandler and something as Boomer-trite as Something's Gotta Give. Had the movie originally been treated as a studio comedy, I suspect a reptilian producer would've demanded that the cultural jokes either be more offensive or fit into a romantic comedy mold. That's a simplification of today's trends, but either way, the film's honesty and compassion that reached out to unlikely audiences would have been sacrificed.

The ending would definitely be different, though I don't think in a way you or I would like. Picture Bob heading to the airport in the end: He thinks he sees Charlotte walking in the distance, so he stops the taxi and runs after her, desperately calling her name above the urban din, a giant among midgets (because there aren't enough short jokes already). Since we've only seen the woman's back, when he gets up to her and spins her around, it's not really Charlotte but an elderly Japanese woman in a wig (another cheap laugh). Then he sees Charlotte for real, across the street, walking toward the karaoke joint where they shared a moment. Without taking his eyes off her, Bob crosses the street right toward her, inadvertently parting Tokyo traffic. He breaks into a sickly sweet rendition of Bryan Ferry's "More Than This," and soon enough everyone on the street is also singing. As Bob approaches Charlotte, she turns around he hugs her — or better yet, saves that kiss for now. He leans into her ear and whispers the important lesson he's learned about life, a lesson that also helps Charlotte reconcile her rocky marriage. Music swells. Credits roll. Not a dry eye in the house, and Bryan Ferry has newfound movie cred.

If we can agree on anything else, I hope it's that generic Hollywooding would have made Lost in Translation awful. So, if the art-blind Academy acknowledges a film that resists it, all the better.

E-mail Rumaan Alam at rumaanalam@hotmail.com.

E-mail Tony Nigro at tony@superheronamedtony.com.

— graphic by D.P. Barsam (barsam@hotpop.com)